Bluetek IT Solutions Blog

Reports show security is a major concern when using a collaboration tool because it houses the customer data and also important internal data.

The benefits of collaboration tools are spoken everywhere: less reliance on email, more organic collaboration on projects, and better communication and relationships between teams.

Collaboration tools consist of solutions, including video conferencing, VoIP, document sharing, and instant messaging.

However, these tools create potential security threats, and evaluating vulnerabilities — and viable solutions — should be a sustainable part of our tool-selection process.

Security Threats To Be Aware Of — And Potential Solutions

Privileged users: Different individuals in the organization may have varying levels of access to your collaboration tool. With collaboration software, information can reside within unique partitions, with access restricted to selected team members. If a privileged user’s information is compromised, then the entire data will be available to all.

2021 can be described as the year of the software supply chain attack – the year in which SolarWinds opened the world’s eyes, and the extent of the threat became apparent.

Apart from SolarWinds, other major attacks included Kaseya, Codecov, ua-parser-js and Log4j. In each case, the attraction for the attacker is that a single breach, compromise or vulnerability in distributed code can lead to multiple – even thousands – of victims.

Following a six-month analysis of customer security assessments conducted by Argon (an Aqua Security company), the 2021 Software Supply Chain Security Report highlights the primary areas of criminal focus: open-source vulnerabilities and poisoning; code integrity issues; and exploiting the software supply chain process and supplier trust to distribute malware or backdoors.

Technology manufacturers cater to two very large markets with different needs: home users and businesses. You’re about to enter the SoHo (small office, home office) market where home technologies dominate because most single traders don’t need proper business systems with all the extra costs and complications involved.

Some complications are unavoidable. These include, as you know, backup and security, plus things like coping with data protection requirements. But as you will be a startup business working from home, I suggest using home technologies as far as possible. You can move to a business-oriented approach when you need to expand. When that time comes, you will have a much better idea of what you actually need.

Data security is an especially important topic in today’s remote environment. With employees working from home or on the road and connecting via a variety of devices, keeping tabs on data security is more important than ever.

What Is It, And Why Is It Important?

The definition of data security is very broad, but essentially, it means protecting data from destructive forces throughout the life cycle of its use.

Remote work increasing has been an ongoing trend. According to cloud security firm Netskope almost 6 in 10 American knowledge workers are working remotely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and that number is likely to increase.

Even though there was a spike due to Covid-19, remote work increasing has been an ongoing trend. According to FlexJobs, "A special analysis done by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics found that there has been a major upward trend in the amount of people working remotely in the U.S. In the span of one year, from 2016 to 2017, remote work grew 7.9%. Over the last five years it grew 44%, and over the previous 10 years it grew 91%."

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.